Worldly Chatter

Something interesting caught my attention this morning as I read the news; 75% of adults in the Netherlands are overweight and its growing in children, one in every eight is overweight. What? Where?
Holland’s cities and towns are designed very different from those in America. Almost every neighborhood throughout the country has a little shopping center with a grocery store, pharmacy and a handful of other small shops. Each town and city has at least one major center in which you can find everything and anything. This is also where you are going to find the major markets too. Unlike America, you don’t have to drive fifteen thirty minutes to get food or clothes it’s all relatively close to where you either only drive five minutes or do what I do, walk. I live five minutes from the center of Hilversum with everything I need within a ten-minute walk from front door to store. I grab my grocery bag(s) and off I go. It gives me a chance to catch some air, get some exercise and see the people around me. I’m a people watcher by nature so when I read this I was a little dumbfounded. Sure, there is obesity in the country but that much? Makes it sounds like I am back in America when I weighed 250 pounds and I was but just one in more than half the nation of obese people. When I walk around here I see tall thin people, I see tall and average weight people. Average height and rail thin women. I see heavy set but not that much! When we had Koninginnenacht, Dutchie and I sat drinking a beer and people watching. There were only a handful of people, who would be considered obese, walk by.
Then again to some, all you have to be is roughly 25 pounds overweight to be obese and according to a few politicians here in Holland; the government is not doing enough to combat the issue. It is spending all of its time dealing with drugs, cigarettes and drinking and not dealing with, what some call, this generations silent killer. I weigh 140 lbs however, am I slightly overweight for my 5′6 height? I should hope not! It is just as in the States, the accessibility of fast food, processed food and not enough healthy food made quick. We live in a world where people want things done quick and easy; there isn’t enough time in such a busy world. Healthy food doesn’t seem to be as convenient to some hence the growing issue all over the world. I used to be the girl grabbing fast food because I didn’t have time to cook, drank the coke and munched. Hell I still munch but I don’t eat the junk as much and I walk to compensate for what I do consume. With time going by in a New York minute what can one do? Force people to only have a one family income, force them to slow down when the world demands otherwise? They say there isn’t enough being done but what can you do? How do you combat something that no one really talks about or acknowledges? You can’t force people to change can you?

obesity, Holland’s obesity problem, overweight